21 Attitude Principles for Lust Struggles

The struggle with lust is a struggle with the deepest human emotions. And therefore, fixing these emotions fixes a person deeper than anything else.  The foundation of a building is underground and no one sees it, but it holds up the entire building.  If the foundation of a Jew is weak, his whole spiritual structure is fragile and in grave danger of collapse.

Often we are aware of how serious these sins are, yet our “Fear of Heaven” alone isn’t always enough to stop us when faced with an attack of lust. It’s not that we don’t fear Hashem, but will power alone is often not sufficient when dealing with these extremely addictive behaviors.

Almost everyone struggles with lust on some level, and a high percentage have stumbled in these areas as well.  In the GYE community, you will find thousands of religious Jews like yourself, struggling in these areas.

The biggest obstacle to succeeding is not believing you can succeed. The first impediment to overcoming this struggle is not in your genes, your childhood or your environment. If you believe you can succeed and are willing to make the effort, you will find the way out.  Absolutely NOTHING stands in the way of a true RATZON.

By nature, we go to what feels good and try to avoid pain.  Pleasure and suffering are both part of life. But we get to choose which pleasures we want and which suffering we want.

Nothing worthwhile comes without hard work.  One of the greatest obstacles stopping a person from changing is the notion that it can be done without a lot of investment.  We tend to forget that our whole purpose on this world is to grow and improve.

The Yetzer Hara's job and goal is to cause us damage, and to do this he was given permission to use pleasure and "Sipuk" (fulfillment) as a bluff to be able to harm us. But we must understand that his seductions are like a terrorist offering us a piece of cake to ensnare us.

We are unlikely to succeed if we try to fight the Yetzer Hara head on.  Just like terrorists are often successful because they don’t try to fight a big army head on, we must also learn to apply guerilla warfare and pre-empt the Yetzer Hara.

This struggle is the fertile soil that our “true” selves will grow out of. And through it, we learn how to give our hearts over to Hashem. And hopefully we will be able to look back one day and say that it was all worth it.

We have often discovered that we were trying to fight only the Yetzer Hara, rather than building and changing ourselves. For true long term success, we must learn to fight the cause of the bad behaviors and not just the symptoms.